The Journey
by Abisian
Summary: Molly and John meet for tea and end up discussing Sherlock as he was before John knew him. John finds out some interesting things about his best friend, as well as just how big a role Molly played in his life. Sherlolly. Rating will change.
1. For Starters

John and Molly meet for tea and end up discussing Sherlock before John came into the picture. John learns new things about his best friend, and just how big a role Molly played in his life. Sherlolly. Rating will change.

I've got all of part I finished; I'm just editing the other chapters now and planning my next move. I hope you stick around for the entire ride. Enjoy, y'all.

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**Part I: Kicking the Habit**

** Chapter 1: For Starters**

"So I'll just add that to the list of things I never knew, shall I?" John said in his quietly sarcastic way. He sipped at his tea and set the cup back on the china saucer with such force Molly was sure he was going to break it.

"To be fair, I've known him quite a bit longer than you have," she responded softly. She took a self conscious sip of her own tea. "It's not that I've been hiding it from you. It's just never come up. And no one's really asked me directly …"

John rolled his eyes and sat back in the little wooden chair. He looked at the space between them, at the tabletop and the crumbs sitting on the edge.

"So you've just been funneling him pieces of people to keep him occupied? That's it then?"

Molly sighed and lowered her teacup to the saucer.

"You've seen how he gets when he's craving cigarettes. And you saw how it was before the whole Magnussen debacle. You've never seen him really on drugs, or going through withdrawal. You don't know what he's like. And I will do anything to keep that from happening again. I will do anything to keep him from wasting his mind. If that entails giving him body parts from the morgue to keep his mind occupied, then so be it."

John watched as she twisted the gold band around her finger and she saw a flicker of pain shoot across his face.

"It would have been nice to know. I know you and I haven't been close. But it would have been nice to know. He's my best friend."

He wasn't accusatory. There was no blame in his words. Molly understood completely.

"He didn't want to make a fuss about it."

"And you do everything he wants."

"Of course I don't." Molly frowned. "You're angry at him, not me," she told him softly. John sighed, rubbed a hand over his face.

"You're right. Of course you're right. I'm sorry, Molls." He looked up at her, arms crossed. "What was he like? Back then? With the drugs?"

Molly sipped her tea, pensive. Where should she start? That particular tale was something of an epic. It was too large for a single meeting at a coffee shop, and yet its path was such a clear, clean-cut one. She smiled as she replaced her cup on its saucer, drew her finger around the edge of its mouth.

"I fell in love with him almost at first sight. I guess we can call it that, anyway. Fresh out of university, fresh at Bart's. I'd only been working there a few months when he came into the morgue. Greg Lestrade had fewer grey hairs back then, and I used to think Sherlock was the cause of them."

She smiled fondly at the memory.

"Sherlock was high as a kite. I didn't know it then, but he'd been using for years. It was strange, seeing someone so high function so well." Molly gave a sad little chuckle. "But it was almost like he didn't really know how to function. He could do the things he knew absolutely how to do—examine a body, spout off theories for Greg—but he couldn't interact with people, not well. The first thing he ever said to me was that the color of my jumper did downright alarming things to my complexion."

John huffed out a short laugh and shook his head. "That's sounds like him, yeah."

"I let him say what he wanted because he was Sherlock Holmes, and he was beautiful, and he looked at me, and I was me, and I have a knack for becoming attached to emotionally unavailable men. I'd always been the quiet sort, and not a lot of self esteem either, so it didn't really bother me that Sherlock insulted me. I think sometimes I could trick myself into believing he was trying to distance himself from people. He was always so lonely—" Molly took a deep breath, looked down at her tea. "No—I'm rambling. I'm sorry. You asked what he was like. It's something of a journey, really."

She paused, gathering her thoughts, reaching inside her coat pocket for a pack of saltines. She opened it, using the index finger and thumb of both hands to break open the packet. John waited patiently, arms still crossed, as she nibbled at her crackers.

"He was awful," she said finally. "Mostly. I met him on a day he'd been busted for possession of narcotics. Mycroft worked his Mycroft magic and had Greg pick him up. If he helped solve a seemingly unsolvable case, the drugs bust wouldn't go on his record."

"They brought a man influenced by drug use to look at a body to solve a murder." It wasn't a question; it was a statement, one of disbelief. John was dumbstruck. "Not exactly a good judgment call."

Molly gave him a knowing smile and said, "He was done in five minutes."

_The lead pathologist—clipboard in hand, mouth agape, indignant—hadn't even finished the preliminary paperwork on the body. Molly, pencil and notebook in hand, was watching the events with a bemused smile. This character was an interesting one._

_His hair was a mess of dark curls, unwashed and unruly. His eyes were bright as he rolled them at Dr. Chambray, eyebrows arching in unmasked irritation. There was a sweep of stubble stretching across his top lip, his chin, over his jawline, down his neck. His cheekbones were sharp, his face young. He stood erect in a gray T-shirt and dirty, frayed jeans. The plaid button-down he wore open over his shirt was riddled with cigarette burns; he'd tried rolling the sleeves up over his elbows but the cloth was in tatters and was sliding down his arms. He was thin, but not starved; angular, but not gaunt._

_He'd look so elegant if he didn't look so homeless._

_"How—how can you stand there and presume to know these things?" Dr. Chambray spluttered, fumbling his clipboard in his meaty hands. "Greg, get him out of my morgue!"_

_Lestrade put his hands up in a placating gesture while his partner stuffed his hands in his pockets and rolled his eyes._

_"Sherlock's not just an ordinary fellow, now, Phil," Lestrade said slowly. "Listen to what he says. He comes highly recommended—"_

_"I don't care if the bloody _queen _sent—"_

_"We don't have time for this!" the thin man—Sherlock—boomed. Molly looked over at him, alarmed. His voice had a deep, resonating timbre, so low she could almost feel it in her chest. He pulled his left hand from his pocket and looked at his watch for several seconds. "I'm telling you, you fools, that this man's brother will be getting on a train to the airport in ten minutes." He looked back toward Lestrade. "Intercept him there and check the pills in his medicine bottles; I assure you they won't be the one's he's been prescribed." He turned swiftly, whipping around to pin Dr. Chambray with his steely blue-green eyes. "And you call yourself a doctor," he sneered._

_Dr. Chambray slammed his clipboard on the exam table next to the dead man's leg and began storming from the room. "He's mental, Greg," he grumbled loudly, composure lost. Sherlock opened his mouth to speak, but Lestrade threw a withering look over his shoulder. Sherlock clamped his mouth shut as the two men exited the morgue, doors swinging shut behind them._

_Molly stood with her arms around her notebook, hugging it to her chest. She would be lying if she said she wasn't somewhat shocked; Dr. Chambray was a noted hardass. She'd never seen him so angry and out of his league._

_Grin in place, she turned her head to look up at Sherlock, but her smile faltered when she realized he was staring at her with a hard look in his narrowed eyes._

_"Wh-what?" she stammered. Sherlock only looked at her for several long moments. She couldn't even keep her gaze on him as his eyes roamed obtrusively up and down her body. Instead she held her notebook tighter and kept her eyes trained on the floor. She could hear him rustling in his pockets and chuckling softly. She jerked her head up to look at him when she realized he was trying to light a cigarette._

_"You can't—can't smoke in here," she told him. "This is a morgue."_

_Sherlock looked around the room as he drew from his cigarette. He took in the drawers and the body on the slab and exhaled, smoke wafting around his head for a moment before dissipating. _

_"Not hurting them, then, is it?" he asked her, nodding toward the wall lined with body drawers. He slipped his lighter back into his pocket. "I don't suppose you have any cash for a cab. I used my last fifty quid for recreational purposes."_

_Molly opened her mouth to respond but snapped it shut instead. _Drugs. He meant drugs_, she told herself. She'd never felt more naive than in that moment. Sherlock took another drag on his cigarette and began making his way toward the door._

_"I'd rethink you choice of color in the future," he said over his shoulder, pushing the morgue door open with his shoulder. "Chartreuse is an appalling color on you, and you're not doing each other any favors."_

_Molly watched as he slipped through the morgue doors, watched them swing to and fro before coming to a stop._

_"Oh," she said to the empty room, to the corpse on the table, to the corpses and body parts in their refrigerated doors. "Oh," she said to herself and her poor, mesmerized heart._


	2. Be Still

**Part I: Kicking the Habit**

**Chapter 2: Be Still**

"He sounds like a right dickhead," was John's only response. He had to admit, his first meeting with Sherlock was much more pleasant than Molly's had been. Apparently the years had mellowed him out.

Sort of.

"Oh, he was. He was God-awful back then. But of course I was completely blind to it."

"So, what, he went through withdrawals then?"

"He told me later that Mycroft tried to have him admitted to rehab, but Sherlock convinced him that he'd found no fewer than fourteen different ways to smuggle drugs into the compound. And that was with just a glance at the place. He managed to convince everyone that he would sweat it out at home—you know how he is, he figured out about how long it would take him to overcome withdrawal—and he stayed bolted in his shitty apartment until it was done."

Molly and John had left the little coffee shop and taken a walk through the park while she talked. They stopped and got coffee to go from a vendor, and were resting on a bench. Molly pulled the lid off her coffee cup and blew at the steam rising from within.

"But you said you watched him go through it?" John prompted, taking a tentative sip of his own coffee.

"Mm, yes, I did," Molly confirmed, nodding. "A few days after the incident in the lab Greg came in with a new case, but Sherlock wasn't with him. Like a love-struck teenager, I was very disappointed that my new crush didn't show up at school on Monday." She smiled ruefully, the left side of her mouth lifting into that familiar smile. "So I asked about him, and Greg told me about Sherlock holing up and becoming human again."

_God, she was foolish. _Idiot, idiot, idiot._ But chastising herself wouldn't do any good. That bell had already been rung. Literally._

_Molly could almost hear the remnants of the doorbell echoing through the flat. She really could hear a voice from inside yelling at her to go away._

_"It's Molly Hooper! From—from the morgue?" Her voice tapered off as she got less confident in herself. Always a terrible, terrible habit of hers. "I've brought you some things. The detective inspector mentioned—"_

_The door was wrenched open and Molly could see Sherlock's haggard face through the crack in the door. He was sweating profusely, his face was beet red, and he seemed to have a slight tremor._

_"—you were going through withdrawal," Molly finished lamely. But Sherlock opened the door enough for her to slip through, and then he slammed it behind her._

_She stood in the doorway, unsure of what to do or where to go, while Sherlock slinked back to the leather chair in the corner of the room. He pulled a blanket around himself until all she could see was the mess of limp curls atop his head._

_His flat was tiny. It was an open floor plan, so his kitchen, living room, and dining area were all in one big space. She could see down the short hallway to a closed door, which she supposed was his bedroom. Presumably there was a tiny toilet tucked away down there too._

_Molly shifted the box in her arms and searched for somewhere to set it down. Every surface in the flat seemed to be covered in books and papers and clunky laptops. She made her way to the kitchen area and balanced the box between her hip and the lip of the sink while she used her free hand to clear a space on the counter. Every bit of counter was covered with dirty dishes and what could have been food at some point in time. She scrunched her nose as she tossed what looked like a half-eaten sandwich into the bin._

_She'd brought him towels and ice packs—she wasn't sure what he had on hand at his flat when she'd packed this box—and anti-nausea medicine. She'd packed bottled water, saltine crackers, and an electric blanket. She'd refreshed a bit on withdrawal symptoms, but she had no clue what he'd been using, so she'd planned for the most common side effects._

_She shrugged off her coat, folding it over the single dining chair in the room, and grabbed a box of anti-nausea medicine and a bottle of water. _

_"Why are you here?" He sounded bored, annoyed, as his muffled voice floated through his blanket. Molly couldn't resist smiling; he looked ridiculous._

_"Have you eaten?" she said. "I brought crackers, water. Stuff to help with the dizziness and nausea." She reached for his blanket and pulled it away from him. He was folded up in his armchair, all angles and limbs. His feet, clad in black socks, were dangling over the chair's arm. He watched her, eyes narrowed once again. He was a mistrustful person, Molly realized._

_"Isn't there anyone here with you?" she said, holding out the bottle of water. Sherlock ignored it. "I didn't think they left drug addicts alone when they were recovering." Of course she knew that. But she didn't know what else to say. He made her feel so silly. So intimidated._

_"I'm not an addict," he said matter-of-factly. Once again his eyes were roaming her body; from her toes, up to her knees, past the hem of her skirt; her floral print dress, the belt cinched at her waist, her plum-colored cardigan; up the slope of her neck and, oddly, to her ears. His eyes then traveled across her shoulders, down her arm, to the bottle still held out in the air._

_He held up his hand, waiting for her to drop it into his fingers. She hesitated, unsure, before pressing it into his palm._

_Such an odd man._

_Such a beautiful, delightfully odd man._

_"If you're not addicted then why do you take them? For fun?"_

Stupid, stupid, stupid thing to say._ She knew it as soon as the question tumbled from her lips._

_Sherlock looked at her sharply. _

_"You're not sleeping enough; you're barely repressing your sexual frustration; you're new at St. Bart's, an underling, but you think you could do a better job than your boss; you live in a flat alone with a cat; you're hyperaware of those who've caught your attention but at the expense of your own needs; you haven't had a drink in ages but you like drinking, so you haven't got any friends to go out with anymore; you've just moved here, or at least further into the city, and you're trying to make friends; but your self-esteem is so low that you've been here for months and haven't made even a short acquaintance, save for the anti-social junkie going through withdrawals, and only because you've forced yourself on me."_

_There was a long pause. Molly stared down at Sherlock, not knowing exactly what to say. His eyes were boring into hers, his brows furrowed in pain or irritation or sickness, whatever, it didn't matter, because Molly couldn't keep looking. Her eyes moved down again, like they had at the morgue, and she found herself staring at his dusty socks._

_"Tell me, was that fun?"_

_His voice was clear, crystalline. Divested of pain, if he'd been feeling any; lacking any sense of nausea or sickness._

_"No," Molly answered softly._

_"This is what happens, Miss Hooper. I see everything. I could see all that just by looking at you. And that's the tip of the ice berg. I. See. Everything. It goes round and round in my head. Every waking second."_

_He jumped up then, jerking his legs over the arm of the chair so fast Molly tripped backward to get out of his way. He stalked across the room, circling his furniture. He slipped a long finger over the spines of his books, one shelf, two shelves, three shelves. He stepped on top of his side table, long leg folding up, and stepped down on the other side of it. He was restless. Why was he restless? He walked to the kitchenette and looked at the box sitting on his counter._

_"Seeing, observing. It can't be turned off. I notice things, everything." He pulled a pack of crackers from the box and examined them for a moment before continuing. "The drugs help."_

_And that was that._

_At least until the next night._

_Molly returned to Sherlock's little flat, much to his annoyance. She would never admit it, but she enjoyed a challenge._


	3. Warmer

Someone mentioned that it sounded as though Sherlock is dead. I don't want to give things away, but I can say for certain that Sherlock is most definitely NOT dead. I thought I'd been clear in the text by having John and Molly speak about him in the present tense, but I may have been too vague or subtle. My apologies. Thanks for reading!

**Part I: Kicking the Habit**

**Chapter 3: Warmer**

"After all that, you still went back?" John was clearly baffled. "Why? He was a complete arse!" He was leaning forward on the park bench, long-empty coffee cup dangling in his hands. He looked at Molly sideways as she drained the last cold dregs of her own coffee.

"I thought about not going back. I wasn't, at first. But I thought about it a lot. And I decided he needed a distraction. If it really was as bad as he said, he needed something to clear his head. Just until he was through with the withdrawal symptoms. Just for a little while."

"What did you do?" John asked. They stood and made their way to the rubbish bin to dispose of their cups. Molly gave John a conspiratorial smile.

"I brought him board games. Cluedo was his favorite, but we never did play it again."

John let out a barking laugh. "No, I imagine not."

_Molly sat stock still, staring down at the overturned board. Game pieces were still rolling around on the floor, and the small deck of cards was upended in Molly's lap. She frowned at Sherlock._

_"Lovely," she murmured, looking down at the cards in her lap. She picked them up gingerly and set them on top of the overturned board. "Next game then?"_

_"Why are you doing this?" Sherlock rubbed a hand down his face, over his stubble. He sounded both bored and annoyed, something Molly would come to realize was his signature mood. _

_"I'm trying to help you—"_

_"I don't need your help."_

_"No, you don't need anything. But you're getting it from me regardless. Now grab Operation or I'll set up Cluedo again."_

_Sherlock looked at her from where he was slumped in his chair, long legs stretched out in front of him. His thin frame was clad in a dark blue dressing gown, gray shirt, and checkered pajama pants. He was looking a little better; still a little homeless, but at least he'd showered. They stared at each other. Sherlock's usual look of distaste was on his face and Molly's lips were pressed into a thin, stubborn line._

_After a long impasse, Sherlock rolled his eyes and reached over to his side table. He grabbed the Operation box and held it out to her. She took it from him and began setting it up in Cluedo's place atop the overturned box they'd been using as a table._

_As it turned out, Operation wasn't such a good idea. Sherlock was still wracked with tremors, which made him angry, and he became so violently ill halfway through that he couldn't even keep crackers and water down. Molly sat on the edge of his tub, damp cloth and bottled water in hand, as he wretched into the toilet. She gave him the water and rag between heaves so he could rinse and wipe his mouth. After a series of dry heaves, Sherlock slumped back against the tub next to her legs, rag held to his mouth._

_"You don't need to be here. Or come back," he told her._

_"Don't let me hurt your pride," she responded._

_She didn't have to be looking at him to know he was rolling his eyes._

_"You're in need of a shave. You'll feel better if you shave." This was a leap of faith; Sherlock didn't look like the type to keep a beard, but she had no way of knowing for sure. Sherlock held his hand up flat in the air, and they watched his fingers shake._

_"I suppose you'd have me slit my own throat," he grumbled. Now it was Molly's turn to roll her eyes. She pushed herself off the edge of the tub and opened his medicine cabinet. His straight razor was on the bottom shelf. She held it up to him, eyebrow cocked._

_"Nonsense," she said. "I've never given a man a shave, and I work with the dead more than the living, but I can give it a go."_

_Sherlock was dubious, to say the least. Within ten minutes he was sitting in his one dining chair, dragged into the bathroom from the kitchen. Molly had draped a towel around his shoulders and lathered him up with shaving cream. His head was tipped back, and she was all too aware of his startlingly bright eyes watching her warily. She held his razor poised at his neck. Her hand was steady (it always was; she didn't get through med school on hard work alone) but she was nervous. She never did work with the living, only the dead._

_"If I cut you, I am so, so sorry," she said just as she began slowly scraping the blade up his neck. Sherlock tensed beneath the blade, and she was fairly certain he was holding his breath. She paused to wipe the blade with the towel in her left hand. There was a clean swath of pale skin on his neck, disappearing under his jaw. She smiled down at him._

_"That wasn't so bad, was it?" Sherlock closed his eyes, eyebrow raised, as though it pained him to listen to her speak. Molly flushed right up through her ears and lowered the blade to his skin again. "I'll just hurry along then, shall I?"_

_Molly's expert hands made clean work of his shave. She uncovered his jawline, so square and masculine for someone so thin. She carved out the angles of his face, the delicate bow of his lips, until the man sitting under her hands was ten years younger than the man who'd been there fifteen minutes before. He was so devastatingly handsome; she was at war within herself, fighting the urge to stare at him. _

_Sherlock sat up and dabbed his face with the towel, removing the last traces of shaving cream. Molly leaned forward and wiped at the hollow space under the right side of his jaw, catching a bit of shaving cream that he'd missed._

_"Don't you feel much better?" she asked him, probably a bit too brightly. She folded up the towel in her hands, suddenly not knowing what to do with herself. Sherlock ignored her._

_"I'll be better tomorrow. The worst of it is done," he said, refusing to look at her directly. _

_They were silent for several long moments. Molly knew what she wanted to say to him. The questions were burning holes in her tongue, but she didn't know how to phrase them. _

_"Your ... your mind. You were high at the morgue. But you were still able to solve the murder." She said it stiffly, haltingly, unsure of her words as they forced their way through the confines of her teeth. She meant it as a question but couldn't find the words to really ask it. Sherlock looked at her, questions in his eyes. Molly looked down, unable to meet his gaze._

_"I just mean—you said you take the drugs to quiet your mind. But in the morgue—"_

_"I wouldn't expect you to understand. They keep me occupied. Or they did."_

_"Why don't you find something less ... desctructive?" she queried. "Surely there's something—"_

_"I have, Miss Hooper. Found something. Now if you don't mind, I need to be left alone."_

_Molly wound her scarf around her neck as she pulled the door to his flat closed behind her. She'd left him sitting on that chair in his bathroom and she hadn't looked back._

_Sherlock Holmes was clearly a troubled person. Molly cursed herself as she glanced up briefly toward his living room window. She cursed herself for being a fixer, for wanting to solve people's problems. For sticking her nose where it didn't belong. Sherlock made it clear from the get-go that he didn't want her there, but she just didn't listen. So why were her feelings so hurt? _

_"You're too old for this," she chided herself aloud. She hoisted her bag onto her shoulder, gripping the strap with both hands, as she kept on walking._


	4. Companionship

**Part I: Kicking the Habit**

**Chapter 4: Companionship**

"It was a few weeks later when I found out what sort of distraction he meant. I hadn't been able to talk to him since he ordered me out of his flat; every time I came round, he refused to answer the door. But after a while he came into the morgue with Greg as Dr. Chambray and I were looking over the body of a recently deceased woman." Molly looked over at John, lips quirked up into a grin. "He stood there, cool as you please, and Greg spoke to Chambray about letting Sherlock examine the body."

"I'll be damned," John said softly as they made their way through the park, red and brown leaves scattered across the pathway. The trees in the distance looked like matchsticks, tall and thin and bare but for a few leaves hanging on to autumn. "That's how he started consulting for New Scotland Yard. I knew he was doing it as a, you know, alternative. But I didn't know—"

"That it was to repay a favor?" Molly laughed. "No one knew. He struck a deal, just the one, to get out of a drug charge, and ended up liking it so much he stayed. He still had his danger nights. Mycroft would call me sometimes, you know. I was so bewildered the first time it happened. I didn't know who was on the other end of the phone, and he just gave me this cryptic command to keep watch on Sherlock Holmes." Molly rolled her eyes at the memory. "They both like to be so dramatic."

John laughed out his agreement.

"He barely acknowledged my presence. We tiptoed around each other. It was so childlike. So embarrassing to think about it now. But after a few months he started to open up. It was … nice. It was a bit like you are with him, really. Comfortable. Almost companionable."

_"You should start a blog."_

_The statement hung in the air between them, surrounded by silence. Molly liked that about Sherlock; you could have a comfortable silence with the man without feeling the need to fill it with useless words. The silence stretched on as Sherlock shuffled her words in his head, staring down at the single finger sitting on his kitchen table. He was surrounded by chemicals, beakers, vials; an old microscope and several pairs of gloves. Clear plastic goggles were pushed up into his curls._

_"A blog," he repeated. Molly nodded. "What would I write exactly?"_

_"Anything. Your experiments."_

_"My experiments." His said it slowly, drawing out the words, rolling it around on his tongue. He was liking the sound of that. But — "Why?"_

_Molly smiled at him sadly._

_"Just thought it might do to get your mind off … things. You know."_

_Sherlock nodded his understanding. He picked up the dismembered finger between his latex-clad ones and brought it close to his face. He sniffed it once, inspected it. Then turned to her, gesturing to the dead finger._

_"Do you think you could get me more of these?"_

_Molly paled. "I—er—"_

_"Possibly a whole hand. Oh, maybe a arm?"_

_"Sherlock, I can't just bring you body parts. I could lose my job." She was folded up in his armchair sideways, bare feet on the arm. A book was perched in her lap, lying open against her legs. _

_Sherlock lowered his eyes to the finger, dejected. "What am I supposed to experiment on? Write about?" he asked. _

_"You have other interests. You're a graduate chemist; you can do experiments on things other than dead people—"_

_"But this is so much more interesting," Sherlock pouted, placing the finger back on its specimen tray. Molly couldn't help thinking he looked like a little boy. His dressing gown was open, he was still in his pajamas, and his hair was a ruffled mess from his goggles. His shoulders were hunched, palms pressed against the tops of his knees. He was sulking._

_He was adorable._

_Damn him._

_Molly rolled her eyes and snapped her novel closed. "And where exactly would you put these body parts?" she asked him. "It's not as though we can fit a whole arm in that little cooler."_

_"I can put them in my fridge," he told her, all business. _

_Of course. Genius._

_"Meet me at the morgue tomorrow evening when my shift ends. I'll see what I can do." _

_Molly opened her book; Sherlock returned to his dismembered finger._

"So it's your fault he keeps that bloody blog," John grumbled. Molly grinned at him.

"You could say that. It was one was my better ideas, wasn't it? Occupied his mind well enough. His relapses were much fewer after that. He stopped drinking altogether, did keep smoking, but stopped the opiates. Mostly."

John looked at her, really looked at her then, and stopped on the path. They had come to another bench, and John took the opportunity to sit down.

"It occurs to me," he said slowly, "that when I met you in the lab that day, for the very first time, you and Sherlock were not pals. Certainly didn't have the relationship you've been describing. What happened?"

Molly took a few moments before responding. She looked down at the frayed hem of her striped scarf, toyed with the loose strings. Then she sat down next to John and looked out at the brown grassy expanse of the park lawn, matchstick trees waving in the distance.

"I ruined it," she said finally. "I mean, at the time, I ruined it. He was always so lonely. I thought he and I were just alike. I thought we got on well. I misread all the signals completely. We weren't alike at all; that was just wishful thinking. I thought helping him and being there for him had helped us forge this uneasy friendship that could … be something more. That's what I thought he wanted. I was so sure that's why he let me come around."

"You've lost me, Molls," John told her, bewildered.

Molly adopted a knowing smile, one side of her mouth tipped up, lips pressed together. John was still looking at her, waiting. She then opened her mouth and uttered, so softly, two words John definitely wasn't expecting.

"The Kiss."

End Part I

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This is the end of part I, my lovelies. I hope you all follow me into part II. Thank you so much for all your faves, follows, and comments thus far; they are my driving force. 3

See y'all soon. ;)


	5. Protecting Yourself

This is the start of Part II. Thank you everyone for reading, and especially those who have followed, faved, and commented this story. It means the world to me. Enjoy.

**Part II: The Kiss**

**Chapter 5: Protecting Yourself**

John had long since gotten used to his best mate having a significant other. It was odd at first, sure. And they'd been secretly seeing each other for months before anyone became aware of it. And now he was married, even though they hadn't told anyone until well after the fact. But knowing Sherlock had been involved with someone—Molly of all people—before he and John had ever met was seriously throwing John for a loop. Knowing what Sherlock was like when the two of them met, he wondered to himself how anyone could have put up with the man.

"Kiss?" he repeated. He realized he was doing a lot of that today.

"It was so stupid," Molly sighed. "It haunted me for years. It completely changed everything."

John crossed his arms and leaned back into the bench. He crossed his ankles, the portrait of comfort. "Well now you've got me intrigued."

_Molly was lounging in Sherlock's armchair, flipping through a forensic journal, when Sherlock himself slammed his hand down on the kitchen table. Molly nearly jumped straight out of her skin._

_"What is it?" she asked, almost in a panic._

_Sherlock ignored her (at this point she was used to it) and jumped up from his seat at the kitchen table. With his goggles still pushed up onto his head, he grabbed his violin and the half empty pages from his music stand. He placed the sheet music on the side table at Molly's feet and scribbled some notes onto the bars. Molly watched in rapt fascination. She'd never seen him play the violin and didn't even know he composed. Usually he was more private about his music._

_Or maybe he'd forgotten she was there._

_He turned toward the window and put his bow to his strings and began to play. It was a lilting melody, happy and cheerful, and it brought a smile to Molly's face. He stopped occasionally to jot down some more notes, make changes, never making eye contact with Molly or even acknowledging that she was there. He looks almost elegant, Molly thought as she watched him. He was wearing his black slacks and white button-down. He was clad in his dark blue dressing gown, however, and his feet were bare._

_She dozed off as he played, the forensic journal laying open in her lap._

_When she awoke, Sherlock was standing at his window, plucking his violin strings with his fingers. He'd discarded his bow and pen and was staring down at the street. Molly set about making the tea, as she typically did in the early afternoon. _

_Molly enjoyed afternoons like this with Sherlock. They worked in companionable silence. Sherlock usually sat at his kitchen table working on an experiment (Molly had been giving him body parts and blood samples); his latest experiment had involved burning hair, but she didn't quite understand the gist of it. Molly would read something, usually a novel or the latest scientific journal. They'd exchange few words. Sometimes a board game was involved (the previous week they'd tried chess, which Molly swore off completely). On the rare occasion Sherlock would be called away on a case, but Molly had no problem with sticking around and tidying up his flat._

_It was all very domestic, she would laugh at herself._

_There was no more frustration, no more telling her to leave him be. They were friends._  
_Molly finished the tea, placing Sherlock's cup on a saucer, and turned to take it to him. She wasn't quite sure what happened—a slip of the hand, probably—but suddenly the scalding tea was all down her front, staining her sweater and khakis. _

_"Shit, shit, shit!" she swore, pulling her sweater away from her skin. She dropped the cup onto the counter and reached for the nearest dish rag. She hoped it wasn't too filthy as she pressed it against the stinging skin of her abdomen, wiping away the hot tea. _

_Sherlock whipped around, lowering his violin as he took in the scene before him. Molly was pulling her sweater over her head, her blouse riding up to reveal the flat planes of her belly and pelvis just above her waistband. His eyes lingered on the jut of her hipbone—angular, just like him—before he wrenched his gaze away and made his way to his room. He rooted through his drawers, looking for a pair of pajama pants. He hadn't done his laundry in ages; all his t-shirts were dirty. A dress shirt would have to suffice as a top._

_Molly was basically swimming in Sherlock's clothes. She felt her skin flushing in embarrassment as she looked at herself in his bathroom mirror. She'd had to roll the sleeves up to her elbows. The shirt was essentially a dress. His pajama bottoms were much too long for her, so she'd rolled the legs up on those as well. Looking down, she could just see her sock-clad toes poking out from beneath the plaid fabric._

_She looked at her pile of soiled clothing sitting on the toilet seat. She was not usually so clumsy. With a sigh she bundled up her shirts, sweater, and slacks in her arms and padded down the hallway. _

_Sherlock had cleaned up the mess she'd made and poured himself a new cup of tea. _

_"Let's try this again, shall we?" Molly joked. She left her clothes on the arm of his chair and approached him in the kitchen. He looked up at her, midway through a sip of tea. His hand stilled, lips still on the edge of his cup, as his eyes drank her in._

_His pants, drawstrings pulled taught and tied, were sitting low on her hips. His shirt, not quite buttoned all the way up, left the stretch of her collarbone exposed. The garment was much too big to show her curves, but there was something intensely attractive about the way it fell around her arse._

_Sexual attraction was a strange thing indeed._

_His eyes skirted past her to the counter, where the tea tray was still perched. Molly poured her own cup and returned to Sherlock's armchair, where she resumed flipping through her forensic journal._

_They fell quite easily back into their comfortable silence, but Molly couldn't help but notice a restlessness in him that she'd missed before. He'd been fidgety at the table prior to jumping up to grab his violin, and he'd been lost in thought when she awoke from her nap; although she'd never heard him play his violin, he was wont to sit around plucking idly at the strings, and she learned not to interrupt him during those sessions. Now he was drumming his bare toes against the floor while he looked through his microscope. _

_What Molly _hadn't_ missed, however, was his eyes moving down her body when she emerged from the bathroom. It was something she was fairly used to—he would always give her a once-over when she entered the flat, deducing her mood, what she had for lunch, how her workday had been. He did that to everyone._

_But this. This was different. She'd felt naked, exposed, when he'd looked at her. His eyes didn't look at the state of her hair or the lines around her mouth; they'd traced the outline of her pelvis in his pajama bottoms. His eyes didn't deduce anything about the scalpel knick she'd given her hand in the morgue the day before; instead they'd run across her shoulders, down the valley created by her sternocleidomastoid to rest at the hollow where her clavicles met._

_Molly shook her head. Surely not. Surely I'm imagining it, she told herself. But she knew. She'd been looked at like that before. She was more than familiar with the feeling, the heat it left behind._

_Swallowing thickly, she forced herself to focus on the magazine in her hands._

_"Oh, listen to this," she said after a while. "They've done a fascinating study on beheading styles!" _

_Sherlock leaned away from his microscope and glanced toward his fridge. _

_"Geographically?"_

_"Of course."_

_At that, Sherlock pushed his chair back, removed his goggles to drop them onto the table, and padded across the small space between them. He settled himself behind Molly, bracing his hands on the back of the armchair. He leaned forward to see the article. Molly held the magazine open for him._

_And then she suddenly became aware of the proximity of his face to hers. She watched him out of the corner of her eye. His face was so serious as he read, brow furrowed slightly, lips parted just enough … She turned her head slightly, and there was only a millimeter (but also a mile) separating the skin of his cheek from her lips. She let out a little puff of air, a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding, and Sherlock turned his head as well, and their lips were almost lined up._

_Molly couldn't say who acted first, and she didn't particularly care. All she knew was the press of his lips on hers, suddenly, and that his skin was impossibly warm. His mouth was hesitant, unsure, which struck her as odd—Sherlock never did anything without absolute certainty. Molly was vaguely aware of the spread of his fingers as they slipped into her hair, cradling her skull; of her heartbeat thrumming against the pad of his thumb as he pressed it gently against her neck._

_Their mouths slipped against each other like old loves returning to each other after many years apart._

_His fingers touched her hair like it was delicate silk, and then he gripped it like he'd never let it go._

_Her hand cupped his jaw, thumb sliding across his cheekbone as though testing its sharpness, and then her hand was slipping into his mess of curls and gripping his hair in kind._

_The kisses were fervent, passionate, but when they broke apart there was no shortness of breath, no panting, just the heat between them and the drumming of their heartbeats._

_And the cold, strange, confused look Sherlock was leveling at her._

_Molly pressed her lips closed, swallowing down her nervousness, but Sherlock only leaned back away from her, eyes lowered. He couldn't even look at her. _

_She didn't utter a word as he walked down the hallway, into his bedroom, and shut the door behind him. After several moments he still hadn't emerged. Molly took it as a hint._

_With as much dignity as she could muster, hands shaking, she gathered up her tea-stained clothes and stuffed them unceremoniously into her bag. She slipped her shoes onto her feet, tugged her bag onto her shoulder, and left the flat. She pulled the door closed as softly as she possibly could._

_This time, Molly didn't spare the flat a second glance as she walked away._


	6. Tentative Relations

**Part II: The Kiss**

**Chapter 6: Tentative Relations**

John sat in stunned silence. Beside him, Molly looked out over the park. Clouds had started to move in, turning the sky to a dreary gray. They would have to move soon to avoid the rain, she thought idly.

"How—why?" John struggled to find his words. "Did he at least give some excuse for acting like a prat?" he asked her, gesticulating with his right hand, his left still folded across his chest. He finally just slapped his hand across his mouth, at a loss for words.

Molly laughed. "Actually, we never talked about it. It never came up again."

"Never?" John was shocked. Suddenly he felt like a gossiping schoolgirl, but he pushed the thought away and instead grumbled, "Prick."

Together they stood and left the bench behind them, walking back toward the main road. They had hailed a cab by the time either of them spoke again.

"Is that how you two got past it then? By pretending it never happened?" John asked her as he slipped into the seat beside her. Molly gave the cabbie their destination—Baker Street—before replying.

"Yes and no. Like I said, we never spoke about that kiss, and when we did finally run into each other again, Sherlock was completely different. He was cold, distant, like none of that ever happened between us. And not just the kiss—I mean everything. Sitting at his flat, performing experiments together, going out for fish and chips. It was all gone. I didn't know how to get it back.

"I still gave him body parts from the morgue because experimenting, writing in his blog, they really did help him. They kept him occupied enough to keep his old habit at bay, and I cared for him so much, I still wanted to do what I could to help.

"I even started giving him access to the lab at Bart's, because I knew I could keep an eye on him then. Not just because Mycroft wanted me to, but because I wanted to. I was worried about him. In all the time I'd been his friend, I'd never known him to associate with anyone outside of his work. Greg and Mycroft were his only companions, if you could call them that."

Molly looked down at her hands in her lap, flushing slightly. "As petty as it sounds, I'd put up a fight sometimes, just because I knew he would try to bribe me with compliments. He probably thought I was an idiot, a silly girl who would let herself be taken advantage of for the small price of hollow, ingenuine words. But I missed him. I missed my friend."

Molly sighed and looked out the cab window. All this had happened ages ago, years ago, but thinking about it brought a strange tightness to her chest; knowing Sherlock Holmes had almost slipped through her fingers always brought about a feeling of unease.

"I tried getting him to go out with me. We used to go out for tea or coffee or chips, but we never could pick that up again. Things got a bit better over time. He would talk to me more, like he was more comfortable with me, but it was never the same. And I always blamed that kiss. I dated around a bit, tried to show him that the kiss meant nothing to me, that I'd moved past it, but it never worked. Sometimes it made things worse. And then you know what happened with Jim Moriarty …"

Molly looked over at John and gave him a small smile, almost conspiratorial, like an inside joke. By then they were at Baker Street. Molly paid the cabbie, John waited patiently while she unlocked the door, and they made their way upstairs to 221B.

In the two weeks since John had visited his old flat, not much had changed. His old chair still sat in its usual place, and John headed straight toward it. All the old trappings were still present—the bullet holes in the far wall, the bison skull hanging between the windows, the kitchen table with the deep gash running through the wood. It was all so familiar but foreign at the same time.

There was a single picture frame sitting on the mantle now, right next to Sherlock's skull friend. Molly's timid smile was aimed at the camera, but Sherlock was looking down at her. He had the smallest, most tender smile John had ever known him to possess. He'd never seen him look at anyone like that.

"God, he's changed," John murmured. Molly sat in Sherlock's armchair, having divested herself of her coat and scarf, and followed his gaze to the photograph.

"That was taken last week. We'd just signed our papers."

John looked around the flat, fingers drumming against his armrests.

"Not much of a bachelor pad anymore, then, eh?" he joked lightly.

"I don't stay here, actually. We still have my old flat. I am something of a distraction, it would seem, so when he is embroiled in an investigative case, he does his work here."

"That sounds like Sherlock," John laughed. "So then you're Molly Holmes now?"

"We decided that I should keep my last name. I'm known professionally as Molly Hooper, and we agreed that having as few public ties to him as possible was probably safest. All things considered."

John thought back on their experiences together—Mortiarty and Magnussen in particular—and found himself agreeing with her. She'd begun to twist her wedding band around her finger again, almost as though she weren't used to it being there.

"I was so jealous of you," she said suddenly. "I'd tried so hard to get him to see me again, to talk to me again, to open up. I'd thought it was impossible. That he was just closed off to the world again. But he opened up to you, became friends with you, even lived with you. By then, of course, he'd already become friends with Mrs. Hudson and moved into this flat, but his friendship with you was different from any other acquaintance that he'd formed.

"He took you out on cases—something he'd never done with me. He let you in so much more easily than he'd let me. I'd had to work for it—you didn't. It just wasn't fair."

Molly let out a sigh, leaned back into Sherlock's chair.

"And then there was The Woman. Irene Adler." Molly's gaze flitted back up to the photograph on the mantle, and she stared at it as she spoke. "She affected him more than I ever had or could have. I thought so at the time, anyway. Anyone could tell that Sherlock was a little bit in love with her. As in love as Sherlock could be with anyone at the time."

"That was the Christmas party," John said softly, "when he was so horrible to you. Wasn't it?"

Molly grinned like she was fondly recalling a happy memory.

"I'm surprised you remember that," she said. "He was such an arse, and didn't even open my gift to him. And you know everything that happened that night—I left, we all ended up at the morgue anyway looking over what we thought was Irene Adler's body. You weren't there, but he recognized her naked body. That's how he identified her. I think that hurt worse than anything. Knowing that he'd shut me out over one little kiss, but her—he'd seen her naked. How had he seen her naked? Had they slept together? Again, Sherlock was opening up to someone else, but could barely hold a conversation with me. It made me angry. And insanely jeealous."

"But you know he didn't—"

"I know. But at the time, I didn't. All these wild theories were going through my head. And it all just made me very upset. I was expecting Mycroft's call that night, asking me to look after him. I could tell this would be a danger night for him. Sherlock doesn't deal very well with his emotions, as you can imagine. But the call never came. I found out later that Mycroft called you.

"And then I realized Sherlock didn't need me anymore because he had you."

_She was staring at the covered corpse of Irene Adler when Mycroft stepped back into the morgue._

_"I've called John," he told her. "He'll look after him. Thank you for your services, Miss Hooper."_

_"Services? Is that what he thinks this has been?" she asked aloud when Mycroft exited the room. "I've officially been reduced to the useful things I can provide. Which, apparently, is nothing."_

_She was still smarting from her insults at the Baker Street Christmas party, and her cheek still burned with the memory of his lips pressed against her skin. _

_Then she realized she was talking to the corpse of the woman Sherlock was quite possibly in love with, and suddenly she had to get out. She couldn't take it._

_She'd stuffed her Christmas attire in her locker when she'd come into work, and she stared at the balled up fabric for a long moment before deciding what she wanted to do. She wrenched off her sweater, tugged the dress back on over her bra and pants, and then shimmied out of her khakis. She tossed her shoes and socks into the locker with her clothes and slipped her heels back on in their place. She didn't bother putting her earrings or makeup back on, and she couldn't even find the energy to redo her hair; instead she left it falling about her shoulders._

_She couldn't even look at herself in the mirror._

_She left her clothes in her locker, grabbed her coat and purse, and stormed out of St. Bart's. She needed a drink in the worst possible way. She needed a warm body pressed against hers. She needed to not feel whatever this was that she was feeling. _

_The man sitting with his mates was giving her eyes as she drank at the bar. He approached her, they talked easily, and before long they were on the way to his flat._

_Then they were in his bed._

_He was a little on the short side and he was softer than she liked, but his hair was dark and curly, and when they turned the lights off it was just dark enough for her to pretend._


	7. Need

**Part II: The Kiss**

**Chapter 7: Need**

"I avoided Sherlock as much as possible after that. Or I tried. It was so odd and ironic. I wanted to withdraw from him completely, and he just wouldn't let me. He talked to me more often in the lab, brought me coffee on late nights. Talk about a relationship having its ups and downs," Molly joked, shaking her head.

"It was months later when Moriarty became active again," she continued. "You know all about that though. But there was a moment … A small moment between the two of us. And I think I finally broke through to him."

Molly recalled the conversation she'd had with him—that she could see the sadness in him that others didn't see.

_"I know what that means, looking sad when you think no one can see you."_

_"You can see me."_

_"I don't count. If there's anything I can do, anything you need, anything at all, you can have me."_

_"What could I need from you?"_

Molly remembered the conversation, the words, so clearly. She used to recite them to herself at night, in the interim between Sherlock's apparent suicide and his return to the living. They were a reminder that Sherlock had needed her, and she'd delivered. She would always deliver.

"Our conversation in the morgue that day changed him, I think. It was because of that conversation that he came to me for help staging his jump from the roof of the hospital. Years of tiptoeing around, not knowing how to talk to him or interact with him, wanting him to look at me and converse with me again … and all it took was a simple conversation, one simple question."

_"You've always counted."_

_"What do you need?"_

_"You."_

"I saw him once more after his fake suicide. It had been a few months. The hype surrounding his death had died down a bit, but everyone was still grieving. I missed my friend more than ever. And then one night he called me right out of the blue. It had to have been past one in the morning." Molly smiled fondly. "But then Sherlock always did keep odd hours."

_Molly was jerked out of a sound sleep by the shrill chime of her mobile phone. She whipped her arm out to grab the offending device and opened her eyes blearily, blinking at the blinding light. The number was blocked, but she answered it anyway._

_"'Lo?" she said sleepily. The long silence on the other side of the phone made her more alert, and she sat up in bed. She rubbed her eyes, trying to wake herself up. "Hello?" she repeated, much more clearly this time. "Greg?"_

_"I didn't mean to wake you," came the quiet voice, baritone rumbling in her ears. "I thought you might still be working nights."_

_"Sherlock?" Molly gasped. She reached over to her bedside lamp and turned it on, then wrenched her duvet aside. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and placed her feet on the cold floor. "Are you—are you back?" _

_"No, not yet. I … I won't be back for a while."_

_Sad. He sounded sad._

_"What's wrong? Where are you?" she demanded. Sherlock chuckled in her ear, voice low._

_"Nothing's wrong. I'm outside your flat."_

_"My flat?" Molly stood, padded out to her living room. "Is this a joke?" She flipped the lock on her door and wrenched it open. With her phone still held to her ear, mouth gaping open, she stared up at Sherlock Holmes. He was wrapped in a damp black trench coat—not his usual Belstaff, regrettably—and his hair was mussed up and soaking wet. He slipped his mobile phone into his pocket and smiled sadly down at Molly._

_"I have no where to go," he told her softly._

_Still staring up at him, Molly lowered her phone slowly and stepped back, allowing him into her flat. She shut the door behind him._

_"The Baker Street flat is empty," he continued, slipping off his coat to reveal a sharp white button-down. His signature scarf was missing, Molly noted. "Mycroft doesn't know I'm in the city. I shouldn't be here."_

_Molly wanted to ask him why he'd come, but she was afraid of his answer._

_She was afraid of the hope he always gave her._

_"I'm exhausted," Sherlock sighed. "I haven't slept in a real bed in months." He looked wistfully toward her bedroom. _

_Molly nodded in that same direction. "Come on then. Let's get you to bed." She locked her door again and lead the way to her room. Sherlock sat on the edge of the bed and began taking off his shoes. Molly reached for her pillow and phone charger._

_"What are you doing?" Sherlock asked. His voice cut through the darkness like a whip, startling her. She jumped a bit, then straightened._

_"It's just, the spare bedroom hasn't been cleaned out yet; I haven't put the sheets on the bed. I was going to sleep on the—"_

_"Molly. Just stay."_

_He sounded so tired, Molly couldn't bear to put up a fight._  
_ She put her phone on the charger and replaced her pillow, then climbed back under her duvet. She reached up to flip off her lamp, and the room was dark once more. Her body was burning, her heart hammering in her chest, as she settled onto her side. She felt the dip in her bed as Sherlock climbed on top of the covers. _

_Then his head was on her pillow._

_His hand was resting on her hip._

_Molly suddenly became aware that she was wearing his pajama pants and button down shirt from all those years ago._

_This was too intimate for her._

_She held her breath, eyes wide, as his breath hit the back of her neck._

_"I just need to be near someone," he breathed against her skin._

_Molly was afraid to turn around. Afraid to disturb him. Afraid of what she might do if she turned around and was faced with those lips once again._

_Instead she reached down and covered his hand where it rested against her hip. _

_It only took a few minutes. Sherlock's breathing evened out, the tension in his hand eased. He was fast asleep. Molly followed shortly after._

_The next morning Molly was startled awake by her alarm. She reached up to slap the snooze button, then turned over to see if it had disturbed Sherlock. The bed was empty._

_She stretched out her arm, sliding her fingers over the surface of her duvet, feeling the wrinkles his body had left behind. She rolled over, pressed her face into the space where his head had rested, and inhaled deeply._

_His scent was faint and the duvet was cold._

_Sherlock Holmes was long gone._

End Part II

* * *

This is the end of part II, my dears. I always mean to leave more time between updates. But then I remember how much shit I have to do. And realize I would rather do anything else. So I edit my chapters.

Also I'm drunk. And if I can't have a happy ending then dammit someone will tonight.

I feel like I should note that I finish these several chapters at a time. As in, I finish an entire part before I start posting the first chapter of that part. And then I start editing the rest of the chapters in that part. Which is another reason why I update so quickly.

Also, I have this pretty much planned out. So several reviews have prompted me to say: Never fear. I know what's going to happen. May your fears be assuaged, may your doubts be relieved, may your spirits be lifted by the knowledge that this is a happy ending, all questions will be answered by the end, and yes, there are AT LEAST two more parts remaining in this journey.

Thank you so much for your reviews, faves, and follows. I love you all. 3

Part III to follow.


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